Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement
by Thefriendlyvandal
Summary: Full title: "Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array" Gordon dreams of orange and blue.


The thing about being disabled- Gordon had found this out long ago, in his childhood- was that people always seemed to think you were stupid.

It didn't matter if you were head of the math team, or if you won second in the science fair, graduated valedictorian, or if you did your doctoral defense completely in sign language. It didn't matter if you ended up destroying the world or saving it. People talked slower to you. Librarians assumed that he wasn't reading the physics textbooks, but just looking at the pictures; he knew because he could hear them, perfectly well, talking at the circulation desk. The teachers at school would see the shimmering medical bracelet on his seven-year-old arm and coo and say- slowly, none the less- that he had the wrong room, that there had to be a mistake, that he belonged in the room with the squishy chairs and covered lights with the alphabet printed on the wall, god forbid he belong in their high school level physics class. "DISABLED" (so labeled on the rows and columns of spreadsheets that made up class lists) meant "liability" to the middle aged calculus teachers with horn-rimmed glasses saying, slowly, Gordon, you cheated on this test, didn't you? You don't like looking at derivatives at age fourteen. You just like the pictures, don't you? Gordon? G-o-r-d-o-n?

The world was not tolerant, and if there was anything that Freeman wasn't, it was stupid.

So when they spoke to him slowly in the dark ashen place with sweat and filth slicking down his hair down and coppery blood pooling thinly in his mouth, saying G-o-r-d-o-n, can you hear me? Gordon? His first reaction- reeling, light headed, sick from heat and thirst and adrenaline- was to react not to the 4-inch-thick HEV stabilization pipe that had lanced forward upon breaking free from his suit's exoskeleton to impale the soft flesh of his abdomen, soaking the grey linked armor that defended his lower torso with blood and dark yellow battery acid- but to run one gloved fist, hard, into Gina Cross's metal-encased jaw and to abruptly fall asleep with copper pooling deeper and warmer in places he could not feel, and this was the way the world was for Gordon Freeman for a long, long time after- warm, dark, and blissfully free of speech.

When he did dream, sometime later- weak, warm, and tranquilized- he dreamed of his dissertation.

No. Not his dissertation. The gun.

There had been people who had attempted a trans-matter bridging device before, but not without some hefty equipment and some fundamental (and sometimes fatal) obstacles. He started there. Approach it differently. Must be light, must use energy efficiently, must penetrate the surface and halt into a resting phase before and during connection. Must not cause damage. The previous tests he had seen treated the condensed energy as a laser or wormhole- Gordon set about imagining it as a wave. Like a projection, but the gun doesn't need to stay stationary. Like the ocean.

A plasma wave.

Light is both a particle and a wave, but it must be solid. The portals must be palpable, seeable, and he did it in MIT, he swore he did it. No one believed him, but he did. It was warm and moving in his hands and he could see the target aligned on the other wall for a split second before the hard metal weed whacker-shaped device plugged into an outlet a yard away overheated, burned his hands. They didn't believe him, but it was light blue like the sea and orange like the sunrise and wispy like smoke, of course, the atoms are too heavy to move from the surface, the Van Der Waals effect, the reason the entire thing worked without permanently damaging the object. That was the key, see. The others, treating it like a laser, pushing it into the ground until it sparked and swallowed, subjects lost inside. It broke walls and smashed windows. No! Light, gentle, like a water-ski, the energy stays of its own will, you are not god but a prophet, the thin-veiled oceans of blue and orange that danced on the wall before it seared his hands and he had them bandaged for a month and a half, _that_ was thinking with portals.

How It shorted out the physics building. People were pissed at him for that, yeah, but he didn't care; it had its problems. But the two portals were there for six full seconds before it burned out.

It just needed a better power source.

Some young scientists fall into their life's work with more grace than others. Some get married, have a child, a life, read books, but Kleiner had told him at his graduation that he knew that Gordon would be the kind to enter the trance-state. The kind that spends those five years meditating, focusing, staring off into the distance, not eating, pacing, troubled and anxious _, obsessed_.

And he was.

Gordon Freeman pricked his fingers installing the three sharp iron talons that skillfully focused atoms like a bird of prey holding fish. He entered a state of mind during the five years of his doctoral research that he only ever entered again when Alyx put a gun in his hands. He stood vigil at a computer screen picking over data that ultimately wouldn't make it into his thesis, would be deleted on the third draft, all four pages of it. He went down paths that led to dead ends. He made the gun too small, then too large, had to teach himself electrical engineering to avoid anyone else laying a finger on his work. Hands shook. Thoughts buzzed. His heart only stopped pounding when he found himself standing in front of the oral defense panel, the lead examiner congratulating him in his native sign language, he did it, what are you going to do next, go home and sleep? Laughter.

Gordon did go home and sleep. He slept like the dead. He slept through nine of Kleiner's emails and ten from his mother, six from his med-school-attending friend who had apparently come earlier to make sure he wasn't dead in his apartment from a heart attack. He dreamed of portals.

Yes, Gordon Freeman only slept harder in his life when he was impaled, breathing shallow, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding, getting weaker, battery acid searing the skin around the wound. Gentle, now. You are not god, but a prophet; that's how death comes. Like atoms dancing in a sea, he is erratic, thoughts bouncing softly, seeping into electron clouds and hydrogen bonds. Steel talons like a bird of prey, wasn't the spectrometer also like a bird of prey, the talons? The gravity gun? He can't remember. It's been days since he's slept; he's been studying for his defense. The shimmering softness feels like the portals do, warm, gentle, accepting, takes the air from his lungs, buzzing softly like insects in summer air. Orange and blue. Sweeping and swimming. Growing, shrinking, the portals he made.

It's okay.


End file.
